a little flutter of supposed intellectual excitement.  For a moment, at least, I am forgotten, or, if remembered at all, they say to one another as they sip that everlasting pale pink foam out of the “dainty art gems from Venice, you know:”  “Ah, Sophia Gilder is her more clever mamma’s own daughter; but, alas! she will never be such a woman as her mother—­the gifted Mrs. John Robert Gilder, the life and soul of our Culture-Seeking Club!” And I piously hope to heaven that I may be saved from such a fate, and never be the woman that I know mamma to be!

My last effort was said to be a wild, jagged thing—­a reaching out, a groping after.  It was called “Souls Antagonistic:  A Symphony.”  I wore an especial costume—­“suited to the subject,” said mamma.  “A sweet poem of a gown,” echoed Mrs. Babbington Brooks.  When I finished my task, for it was a task, and imposed by a hard task-master, Mrs. Brooks glided, like the serpent she is, over to my seat and looked down with a false longing into my flushed face.  Then in a low, somewhat musical voice, full of a false tenderness and a borrowed pathos, “May I, sweet young girl, touch with mine the precious lips which to-night have made exceeding glad my sad, sad soul with those wise and honeyed words?” She kissed me.  I fairly trembled with an intense loathing.  That oily-tongued creature hates me with a deadly hatred.  And she fears me, for she knows that I have found her out and know her to be what she is, a most successful fashionable fraud.  But it is folly to run counter to the social current.  It is best to hold my peace.  It is hard to do, but it can be, and it must be done.  I was nervous—­rebellious.  I quickly fled away from that false woman and her loathsome caress.  I sought rest and quiet in a distant cushioned corner of the deserted hallway.  I was angry—­too angry for tears.  I buried my throbbing head in my hands and tried to forget my miserable existence; it was such a failure.  It was so unlike that which I wished it to be, and yet I did not have the will-power to make it so.  I was in one of my morbid moods.  Resolutions I knew to be useless.  On the morrow they would be broken.  It was always, and I fear ever will be “Mother and Daughter;” never “Daughter and Mother.”  She always takes the lead, and I, always weak enough to follow.  Was there no one to whom I could turn?  No one to yield me a few kindly words to strengthen me for that constant, useless warfare against, yes, against my own mother?

As if in answer to my silent call, a footstep!  My hands dropped into my lap.  A man stood near.  I did not look up; I knew who he was.  We need hear but once the footfall of certain people and always after know instantly if they are near.  A voice:  “Miss Gilder, do I intrude?”